Charles Rahn
After the welcome presentation during Admitted Student Day, parents and students head out to tour the campus buildings from on the 5th floor of the Student Center on Wednesday, March 8, 2025 during Admitted Student Day.
Columbia’s spring enrollment is 4,952 students, an 11% decrease from 5,570 students in the fall 2024 semester. The college lost roughly the same percentage between fall and spring after the seven-week part-time faculty strike in 2023.
While the percentage of first years who returned in the spring was down 1.5%, the college kept more transfer students, with a 3% increase.
New students in Spring 2025 were lower than they were in Spring 2024, with 94 new students this spring compared to 136 new students last spring, according to an email from Enrollment Management sent to faculty and staff on Tuesday, March 11.
“I was very happy to see the persistence rate for transfer students being up pretty decently compared to the year before,” Derek Brinkley, associate vice president of Enrollment Management, said in an interview. “I think it just points to a lot of the work we’re doing here to ensure that students have the best experience possible.”
Brinkley said that the college has been working on marketing efforts to create a “direct outreach” to prospective students through high school counselors and community colleges.
Columbia will also be creating a “student success” center sometime in 2026 as a result of receiving a state grant, Laurent Pernot, Columbia’s chief of staff, told the Chronicle.
“Not only will it be a space, but it’s also bringing several departments together to better support students,” Pernot said.
In 2019, before the pandemic, Columbia’s enrollment was 6,947, an increase from the year before. It has been steadily declining ever since.
Columbia has unique enrollment hurdles related to the lingering impact of the historic strike in Fall 2023 and a sweeping overhaul of its majors that the Board of Trustees approved in December.
Under that plan, the college eliminated or consolidated nearly half of its programs.
That comes as higher education, in general, is facing a looming enrollment crisis and now new threats from the Trump Administration over DEI efforts.
With lower birth rates after the 2007 recession, there are now fewer college-age people graduating high school. Demographers predict that this so-called “demographic cliff” will hit colleges and universities this fall and with full force in Fall 2026.
College enrollment across the board had already fallen 15% between 2010 and 2021, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
The college has been holding Admitted Students Day every Saturday since Feb. 22 to entice students to come. Students who are accepted at Columbia have a chance to tour campus and meet with faculty.
Brinkley said that 46% of admitted students have already sent in their deposit for the fall semester, noting that Admitted Students Day is a key event for the college to get prospective students familiar with campus.
At a Faculty Senate meeting on March 7, Faculty Senate President Rojhat Avsar, associate professor in the School of Communication and Culture, told attendees that applications are up but not enough to offset the drop from the previous year.
Indiana Perl, a prospective student from Fort Wayne, Indiana, attended Admitted Students Day on March 8. He wants to pursue music production and noted that there was not much of a music scene in his hometown, which is why he is considering Columbia.
“I mean, it’s just a great city for art and music, which is what I wanna really focus on,” Perl said.
For prospective student Giuliana Mendez, Columbia’s fashion studies program piqued her interest. While touring, Mendez got to learn about the variety of different art majors at Columbia.
“I got to look more into the fashion part of things and also see fashion students, I kind of imagine it would be a really competitive and kind of scarier environment to be in,” Mendez said. “They actually all seem really friendly and welcoming, and they seem to like work together and collaborate a lot too.”
Prospective student Kate Hammond from Hoffman Estates, a suburb outside of Chicago, is interested in the design management major, in addition to a minor in photography or film at Columbia. She said she hopes to be in the city for school because of the ability to make connections with other creatives.
While she was at Admitted Students Day, Hammond found Columbia’s atmosphere to be more art-focused, noting that unlike other schools, she didn’t have to seek out the art here.
“I feel like everything has a touch of students’ voices as well, which I think is really unique,” Hammond said.
The current forecast projects an increase of about 100 first-years for the Fall 2025 semester compared to last fall, while transfer enrollment is expected to decline by 100 to 150 students, according Brinkley.
Additional reporting by Vivian Richey.
Copy edited by Matt Brady